Lands of Many

Wetlands from around the world
Size count and species numbers
Overwhelm my mind.


Distant ideas closer to home
How the sea of grass should be
Bloom excessive daydreaming.


Drained up for human occupation
For multi-stories and asphalt
Selfish ingenuity against nature's beauty.

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Part 2

Turning Wheels
Wheels turning
Hit and miss between
Correct and wrong answer
Wandering eyes
Too difficult
Not willing to try
Very few getting my dilemma.

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Part 1

Broken communication
Not listening despite clearly speaking
Uncomfortable
Two word sentences
Not thinking before responding
Great to know
Those you help
Loves you so.

Bartering

The Forum

A table, face to face, and a conversation
An old way of communicating, of bartering.
Topics varying, but both are happy with the trade.
If knowledge is power, then this table is powerful;
If ignorance is bliss, then the traders are informed.

Plaques and Jet Propulsion

Behind panels, just itching for a cool drink,
over flowing excitement vocalized
in your happiest whinny, opened gate--
launching for the water tank.

New Formats to Tryout

Since I have been doing this for about a month now, I thought I would try out a few different styles for uploading my poetry. The different formats will include:

1) just the poem by itself with nothing but the usual blurbs after the poem

2) the poem by itself, and

3) the description below the poem and before the usual blurbs that can be found at the end of all my poems as of right now.

I will be putting up these several different formats over the course of the next month or two. If I come up with a fourth or fifth way, then I will also try those formats to see how they look. As these formats are rotated, I would love it if you guys, my small viewership, would give me some feedback on whether or not you like the various formats.  This plan of mine will start with tomorrow’s post.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Monday and I can’t wait to read what you guys think! 😀

Corbyn

Falling Plastic

This poem is a long one. I wanted to try a narrative type of poem and this  is what came out of that want. This is another poem that looks at my disability and how I handle it as I practice playing guitar. If you have seen No Good Moves then you know that I have a lot of respect for musicians who get up on stage and perform to whomever they can.

With this poem, I let you see how hard it is to play when the arm, hand, or shoulder gets too tired to function properly the way it has to in order to play the guitar. I guess I have a ton of drive to play; as you will see when you read the poem, some days my arm and hand just don’t let me play. I shock myself with how hard I push through those days to try and, maybe, fail again the next day. Or am I looking too hard into the why? Should I just be happy with this answer: I’m musically inclined.

Well, before I start droning on and on too much, I’ll let you decide what you think pushes me to get through the setbacks I experience on the bad days. Here’s Sticky Picks:

Handing over my weapon of choice
in this battle of mind over matter.
Ultimate goal in mind: to surpass preconceived
expectations and make
a believer out of me.

Vice grip clamped down upon the plastic,
left hand positions an A chord
right, swings downwards then up--
no dropping for now.

Several more chord shapes
with down-up, down-up strumming
success on my breath, a smile
for this small accomplishment.  

Next, scales; this budding
guitarists' worst nightmare
other than barre chords. Now the
real fight begins. Starting with
the pentatonic scale I just allow
the hand to pick as it wants.
Alright, all down picking.  

Now, ready to alternate pick this next part
in the warm up. Same scale, but
faulty springs open at unexpected moments;
a reach into the back pocket to try again. 
This is what warm up is all about I hear
myself say as I feed the picks to my hand
again and again.

Like glue, I feel my hand
clamp down upon the pick
at last. Now is the time to
get down to the real practice:
covers and my own song.

With some, they come easy; with
others, I'm back to feeding the picks
to try again. No wonder some give up
even with normal hands; but, I'm a fighter,
this won't bring me down for long.

Now comes the fire to encircle my forearm
with just enough time fit in my material. A push
to get as much in as possible; now the fire's
an inferno. I try to fit in one last note but,
down the pick falls. A glance to my right;
a vibrator appears to have replaced
my semi-function hand. No signal moves
the arm. Reaching over, my left arm moves in
as support to physically assist the picking hand.
Central command is sluggish to regain control.

Every battle's fought to the best of my abilities
in this campaign to play guitar. Some fights end
with me on the high ground, others with me
staring up at the top. Today is but one victory
in a sea of failure. Tomorrow is another day,
an unknown. Speculation gets no one
anywhere so I focus on how I did now and let
what will be happen when it happens.

 

Thank you for reading! Was it too wordy? Or was it fine considering it is a narrative of my day to day attempts to play guitar? I would like to hear what you think of it as a poem. As always, I appreciate it.  If you liked the poem, then it would make my very happy if you passed my blog around to all your friends, family members and coworkers :P.

If you are interested in getting emails every time I update this blog, you can do so on the bottom of the left margin where it says: “Follow Blog Via Email”. All you need to do is insert you email and click the follow button.

If this is your first time to my blog, welcome! There is a page you can go to that will tell you about me and an earlier post where you can find out what you can expect from the blog posts. All you have to do is click here and here. I will warn you when you click on the first of the two links, there will be another link at the bottom of the page that will take you to an in depth story about me. You may require tissues when you read it. Here’s why: it is one of those sad in the beginning, happy at the end stories. So if you are the kind of person to get teary-eyed at those kinds of stories, make sure you have those tissues within reach; you’ll need them.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday!

Corbyn

From the sky

This poem came about in quite a comical way. I was sitting on a bench at one of the gazebos between the Fine Arts building and the Natural and Environment Sciences building writing a separate poem, when something brown fell directly onto the book I was writing in. I was so startled by this little guy’s drop onto my book, I almost screamed. 😀 After a few seconds, I realized that it was only a gecko and that he was probably more afraid of me than I had a right to be of him. The funny thing is that I think that all lizards, snakes, turtles and amphibians are very cool, a little weird I know, but then again, I probably should hate all Cane Toads (marine toads, bufo marinus) as the poison from one ended up killing one of my dogs. The thing is: I don’t look at it’s introduction to Florida as its fault. As a result, I can’t bring myself to hate a species that humans let loose such as the Cane Toad.

Well…. that was a little off subject. Any way, from being freaked out by a little lizard relative like a super preppy girl came a surge of inspiration to write this poem.

PVC Hotel

Everyday for the last couple of weeks, I would go outside to feed my horse and then power walk up and down the length of my parents property while listening to whatever my iPod played. I would do this for thirty minutes to slightly over an hour.  Right as I would be getting ready to head inside, I would look over a series of PVC pipes that sit in the corner. On the outside of and within the pipes would be various tree frogs just hanging out. A part of me wanted to believe that the frogs were there because it was warm, but the problem with that is you cannot feel the heat from the flood lights which are right above this corner and it is the middle of the winter. As maybe some of you can imagine, I was slightly confused as to why they hung out on something that probably was not the warmest of materials in the winter (lows around 45 degrees at night).

Track covering

Yesterday, after reading several poems, I went out to give my horse something to work into the ground since he likes to pace up and down the fence sometimes. It was something that was suggested to me by my dad since my horse has been known in the past to pace excessively up and down the same path.

This poem is the result of the poems I read and the activity of laying bamboo down across my horse’s usual walking paths.

Here’s Laying Bamboo:

Out to return leaf matter to its base element
Bamboo grown out of control 

Placement varied for maximum capacity
Piled high, ready  for transport